This month we are sitting down with Helen Cawthra (pictured) who is the head of intermediary relationships at Vida Homeloans. She has been with the firm since 2021, and took on her current role following a restructure which combined its intermediary relationship and decision-making teams into one “V-Hub”.
Before Vida, she was self-employed as a broker for around two years and before that held roles at Accord Mortgages, Leeds Building Society, Lloyds Banking Group and Cheltenham and Gloucester.
Q: You took over as head of the intermediary relationship team following the restructure last year, how have your first few months been in the role?
A: It’s been a really exciting time. There’s been a lot of changes over the last few months to strengthen our proposition in the specialist market. One of the main changes has been the strategic realignment of the business where we’ve moved to a service-led model, which focuses on us providing great service along with offering direct access to underwriters, which we know adds so much value to brokers and their specialist cases.
We wanted to create a service proposition that brokers can really put their full trust into, it’s really important to us as a business that they have full confidence in using Vida. There’s been lots for me to learn as well, of course, but I’m really enjoying the role.
Q: What are the plans/priorities for the intermediary relationship team this year?
A: The relationship that we have with our key partners is hugely important to us and we work extremely closely together, we have done for some time, and we continue to do so.
Education will be key for this year. We’ve enhanced our criteria, improved our product offering and launched the V-hub. With so many key changes within the business, it’s vitally important that we stay engaged and help brokers to understand how we can help them with their specialist cases.
As we continue to review our products and propositions their feedback is incredibly valuable. It means we can continue to understand where the gaps are in the market and where, as a specialist lender, we can be innovative and support them with those complex cases. Lender innovation will be key this year with some of the current challenges in the market.”
Q: With the rising cost of living many people think specialist lending will become more prominent, what are your thoughts on that?
Q: Vida recently launched a service pledge, why was it important to make such a pledge and how has it been received by brokers?
A: So much hard work has gone in to getting our service to where it is today, it’s been a huge team effort. We’re now ‘Excellent’ on Trustpilot and last year saw us achieve our best-ever NPS score. Having been a broker myself, I realise how important lender service is and how much impact it has on the level of service that brokers can provide to their clients.
As a business, we’re passionate about delivering excellent service so we wanted to do something that makes us put our money where our mouth is. If brokers don’t feel they’ve received excellent service from us, we will refund the £180 application administration fee, it’s really that simple.
To make a claim, there’s a simple form on the website that just asks within 50 words to outline why brokers feel they’ve not received excellent service. That information helps us learn and understand how we can improve going forward but brokers really should have every confidence in using Vida.
Q: Where do you think the broker-lender relationship is at now and do you think it could improve?
A: In any industry when you look at service, there’s always room to learn and grow as we work in an ever-changing environment. The key thing is to always listen to feedback and be able to continually evolve and make relevant changes to ensure that that relationship is as strong as it can be.
It’s really important that you’ve got that avenue of communication, that you can pick up the phone and discuss things and have a common-sense conversation. Sometimes if you add in too many layers that communication can break down and that’s not a great experience for anyone.”
Q: Last year Vida said that it was pursuing a banking licence, how is the process going and what is the reasoning behind it? Do you think more specialist lenders may look to getting a banking licence for security of funding?
A: The goal of a becoming a retail savings bank is gathering momentum. Our regulatory business plan has been submitted to the regulators along with other elements of the banking program which is progressing well.
The move will provide us with even greater funding flexibility and allow us to offer more competitive and innovative products across our mortgage ranges.
With regards to other specialist lenders looking to follow the same path, every business is different. With Vida’s ambitions, we want to diversify our lending, and adding retail funding is the next natural step in our evolution and growth.
Q: Where does Vida see the biggest opportunities and challenges this year for the specialist lending market?
A: The specialist market is growing. We know that there’s several factors that are driving that such as cost of living crisis, the impact of the pandemic and more customers struggling to maintain an increase in unsecured credit commitments, to name a few.
This strain on finances and the squeeze on household income means that more borrowers are falling outside of the ‘mainstream’ criteria. We’ve also seen first-time buyers struggling to meet affordability requirements and landlords struggling to meet lenders stress tests with recent interest rate rises, it really feels like the year for specialist lending.
Brokers are looking to specialist lenders to be innovative with their propositions and provide solutions for those ‘hard to place’ cases. At Vida, we’ve recently made some extensive enhancements to our criteria, meaning that we can offer more choice and flexibility with those complex cases. With innovative products and a commonsense approach to underwriting, Vida is a great place to help brokers make those complex cases that bit more simple.
The year ahead has it’s challenges, but with challenges comes great opportunities so I’m sure it will be an exciting year.
Q: Do you think more mainstream lenders may consider entering the specialist lending space or acquiring lenders in the space?
A: I think it’s really down to every individual lender to decide what their risk appetite is and whether the feel is the right fit for their business to diversify into other propositions such as specialist types of lending.
As I’ve mentioned, it’s an interesting market this year and lenders will need to be more innovative with their propositions and criteria to help brokers have options for those more complex cases.
Q: If you wanted brokers to know one thing about Vida what would it be?
A: That we offer direct access to underwriters, I think I’ve mentioned it already. This was an area we knew would be a gamechanger in the specialist market. When brokers are dealing with those specialist cases that often can be very complex, we want to make the journey as streamlined as possible and what better way to do that than being able to talk to the decision makers directly.
Our underwriters always use a common-sense approach and genuinely want to support brokers with their cases. Their energy and passion for the role is clear to see and the reviews we’ve received on Trustpilot recently is testament to their hard work and dedication. We are always looking for ways to improve the work that we do to ensure we continue to help even more customers to find a place to call home.
